Murcia Living Lab: 7 eHealth SMEs Testing their solutions under real conditions

In September 2015, Servicio Murciano de Salud (SMS), the Murcia Regional Healthcare System, launched a living lab pilot that has counted with the participation of 7 eHealth companies in the framework of the Future Internet CHallenge eHealth (FICHe) project, aimed to challenge European small and mid-sized enterprises (SME) and startups that develop innovative applications and businesses in the eHealth market building upon the available FIWARE technology.

The 7 SMEs selected, presented the most promising and innovative proposals complying with the requirements, receiving direct funding as well as technical training and business coaching, and are testing their solutions in field labs and co-creating with end users.

In order to better provide services, the 7 SMEs were, first of all, matched with their preferred Living Lab city after analysing the needs for a Living lab location (e.g. type of patients, type of healthcare location, preferable country). Then, SMS launched an informal internal call to the different areas of SMS, to present the solutions of the SMEs interested in the Murcia Living Lab, in order to do a matchmaking according to the professional’s needs with a demand approach instead of a technology approach.

The Murcia living lab was launched on 22nd September 2015 and has provided tailored support for the participants, in six development areas: User development, Go-to-Market, Business model, Funding, Technological aspects and Team. This framework has been used to structure the process while still maintain flexibility as all SMEs have different challenges at various moments.

The selected companies were:

1. HEALTHAPP is a private company dedicated to improve links between patient and therapist providing trusted information to patients and familiars about therapy and their process.
2. IDEABLE SOLUTIONS Kwido is a multidevice (web, mobile, tablet) cost-effective platform for caring for elderly people. Helps eldercare and healthcare organizations to save costs, reaching more clients and letting the elderly be independent for a longer time.
3. MEDBRAVO is a comprehensive digital solution for efficient collaborative clinical research on cancer that networks hospitals, health professionals, and research personnel to streamline the referrals of cancer patients to clinical trials. By streamlining referrals of cancer patients to clinical trials, Medbravo offers more patients the opportunity to participate in the development of better cancer treatments.
4. The core value of MYSPHERA is being specialized in hospital processes and workflows and our commitment to provide outstanding services and support to our clients helping them to exploit the full potential of the real-time location systems (RTLS), and to do it with the best tool available for process optimization, inventory management improvement, and safety for staff and patients.
5. NEUROATHOME, is a clinical software development company specializing in rehabilitation and telemedicine.
6. PSICO SMART APPS is a mobile based technology which uses hyper-realistic virtual environments to treat anxiety disorders by virtual gradual exposure. Psious improves the current existing virtual exposure technologies making them available on any mobile system such as smartphones and allowing telehealth applications. Our mission is to revolutionize the mental health care arena democratizing the virtual.
7. UMANICK Identity 4 Health offers secure patient identification to hospitals and the rest of the healthcare sector. It uses the most advanced biometric technologies: fingerprint, face, voice and iris recognition. UMANICK Identity 4 Health avoids both medical mistakes due to erroneous identification, and fraud by identity theft. Thus improving patients’ safety, and reducing healthcare spending.

Some of the services provided are:

• Mentoring

The SMEs have been matched with a mentor based on their needs. The mentor is ‘the hub to knowledge’ for the participant and mentoring activities have been evolving around regular online one to one meetings. During the subsequent meetings, news about the activities and reviews about the Living Labs took place, as well as reminders for webinars and events, making sure that the companies are aware and can participate to them.

• Webinars

The selection of the webinars was based on a need analysis made by mentor of the top SMEs with regards to the most important topics were in which they would like to gain more expertise. The top 5 topics were:

1. European Grants
2. CE certification and FDA approval
3. Privacy & legal requirements for trusted eHealth care
4. How to fund your business
5. How to engage Angel Investors and/or Venture Capitalists

• Matchmaking

In this area, SMEs have been provided different kind of matchmaking possibilities to the companies, facilitating the matching between SMEs and the Top Companies/Key public players in eHealth sector for Partnership or access to important first buyer, for instance: PHILIPS, IBM Watson, Google.